Dan Stevens stars in Cuckoo. (Courtesy of IMDb)

First, let’s get one thing clear: I didn’t fully understand everything that happened in “Cuckoo,” a new indie horror film that hits theaters Friday.

This might be more my problem than the story’s, but a lot of strange things happen at this Alpine resort, run by a bespectacled German hotelier named Herr König, played with a wry menace by Dan Stevens.

Some of the incidents aren’t adequately explained, others aren’t adequately explored. Mr. Koenig seems particularly concerned about things that happen after dark, but not so much about guests who wander into the front desk and convenience store dazed and vomiting. Are they drunk? Sick? Should someone help them? All we hear is, “These things happen.” The hospital is also eerily empty. Sonic vibrations often permeate the area, causing scenes to repeat until they reach a violent crescendo. And no one seems to listen to or care about 17-year-old Gretchen (Hunter Schafer), no matter how badly she hurts herself. The rapid worsening of her injuries and her father’s growing disinterest border on comedy.

Ambiguity can be wonderful for mystery and world-building; but it can also be frustrating. And most of the time, lengthy explanations just make everything more boring. “Cuckoo” delves into all of that. Still, it’s undeniably fascinating, original, and sometimes even funny, in a very twisted and deranged way where laughter is your involuntary response to something terrible. In her captivating lead role, Schafer really goes through it, both physically and emotionally.

Stevens also wears tiny rimless glasses with eerily cool, Scandinavian-esque monochrome outfits, and a screaming ghoul with Hitchcockian glamour in a hooded trench coat and oval white-framed sunglasses. It’s rarely a bad idea to show style in a horror film, and “Cuckoo” is fully committed to that.

“Cuckoo” is the brainchild of German director Tilman Singer, but Singer’s predecessors also contributed to it: the works of David Lynch and Dario Argento. Gretchen lives reluctantly in the idyllic, modern house with her distant father (Martin Csokas), her stepmother (Jessica Henwick) and her mute half-sister Alma (Mila Lieu). She leaves increasingly desperate messages on her mother’s answering machine in America.

It is certainly an exaggerated but accurate portrait of a new family in which the remnants of the old family are treated as a nuisance. When Alma begins to have seizures during the vibrations, which no one but Gretchen seems to remember or notice, the parents’ attention is completely focused on the young girl. They can hardly care that Gretchen has miraculously survived a terrible car accident; Alma is in the same hospital because of the seizures.

As with many horror films, the big reveals were a bit of a letdown for this reviewer – a strained attempt to create a unified theory for this strange place that ultimately doesn’t add much. And yet the emotional connection to Gretchen and her complex relationship with Alma pays off in unexpected ways.

Also, Stevens deserves special recognition for his contributions to Cuckoo. He’s a man who could easily have languished in boring, handsome leading roles, and who instead becomes one of our great character actors. He’s regularly the best and most memorable part of what he plays, just through his sheer commitment to doing it, whether it’s as a Hawaiian-shirted Titan vet in Godzilla x Kong, a Russian pop star in Eurovision, or one of his many wacky horror characters. He and Schafer, always a captivating presence, make Cuckoo very watchable. They live far too comfortably in this dreamy, nightmarish world Singer has concocted, and it’s worth watching.

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